Investors kick their heels in the world's richest league

Before the dot-com boom, there was the footie boom. Buoyed by the successful float of Manchester United, nearly 20 different clubs – from Heart of Midlothian to Southampton – went public.

The trials and tribulations of clubs in the English football league are well documented, and investors who put their cash into Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest, Queens Park Rangers' now insolvent holding company Loftus Road, or strife-torn Leicester City, will be nursing their wounds. In Scotland, shareholders in Hearts might have wished they had used their heads, though anyone who bought into Celtic may be smiling, albeit after a pretty bumpy ride.

In the Premiership, supposedly the wealthiest league in the world, investor apathy has left smaller quoted clubs such as Charlton Athletic, Southampton and Sunderland wondering why they bothered taking a listing. For the larger teams, life isn't much better.

Leeds United came under pressure from its investors after its debts soared to £87m as chairman Peter Ridsdale and manager David O'Leary made a quixotic and expensive tilt at glory. To balance the books, Ridsdale sold the team captain, Rio Ferdinand, to Manchester United for £30m. While this pleased the City, O'Leary was said to have been less happy, although he had resigned before the deal was completed.

Shareholders in Manchester United, however, were less than pleased to see it spend £30m on one player, having spent £45m on two players only a year ago. The club's shares, which peaked at 412.5p when BSkyB was attempting to take it over, now languish at 102p.

Another club whose shares have brought little but distress to its owners is Aston Villa. Mediocre performances on and off the field have led to calls for changes in the boardroom. But as the chairman, Doug Ellis, still owns more than a third of the shares, he's not moving. He's even talking about taking Villa private.

Similar speculation has swirled around Newcastle United, which has changed its directors almost as often as it has changed its midfield since it floated five years ago. It is now firmly in the control of Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall, the two directors who had to resign from the club a couple of years ago after an indiscreet chat with a tabloid hack in a Spanish brothel. As Mr Hall owns 40 per cent of the shares and Mr Shepherd 21 per cent, it is not surprising they returned to the board. With Newcastle United's shares standing at 22p, down from a float price of 135p, investors are praying for a bid.

Tottenham Hotspur has now achieved some stability after the investment company Enic paid Alan Sugar 80p a share for a 29.9 per cent stake. But this has led neither to success on the field nor approval in the City. The shares now stand at just 26p.

At the peak of the market, in February 1997, Bloomberg's Kick index of football stocks peaked at 352.51. It recently hit an all-time low of less than 93. It seems that the only way to make money out of football is to play it – or to be the agent of someone who does.